Configure your own Search & Navigation timeouts

Changing the timeout for Search & Navigation requests is something that has been requested over and over in forums and support cases for quite some time.
The default request timeout is set to 100 seconds (HttpWebRequest.Timeout default) which could be problematic when requests takes longer than expected.

You might know that you can set the request timeout in configuration

This will be used for all types of Find requests and could pose a problem if you want to lower it to 10 secs but at the same time not affect requests that should be allowed to run longer e.g bulk requests.

Timeout is set in milliseconds.

CMS 11 and lower

<appSettings><add key="episerver:FindDefaultRequestTimeout" value="30000" />

CMS 12

   "AppSettings": {
        "episerver:FindDefaultRequestTimeout": 30000
    }

More on configuration here https://world.optimizely.com/documentation/developer-guides/CMS/configuration/

But it's also possible with some code to set the timeout for a specific request

Add the following extension methods

public static ITypeSearch<TResult> SetTimeout<TResult>(this ITypeSearch<TResult> search, int timeout)
{
    return new Search<TResult, IQuery>(search, context =>
    {
        var existingAction = context.CommandAction;
        context.CommandAction = command =>
        {
            if (existingAction.IsNotNull())
            {
                existingAction(command);
            }
            command.ExplicitRequestTimeout = timeout;
        };

    });
}

public static ISearch<TResult> SetTimeout<TResult>(this ISearch<TResult> search, int timeout)
{
    return new Search<TResult, IQuery>(search, context =>
    {
        var existingAction = context.CommandAction;
        context.CommandAction = command =>
        {
            if (existingAction.IsNotNull())
            {
                existingAction(command);
            }
            command.ExplicitRequestTimeout = timeout;
        };

    });
}

public static IMultiSearch<TResult> SetTimeout<TResult>(this IMultiSearch<TResult> multiSearch, int timeout)
{
    var searches = new List<ISearch<TResult>>(multiSearch.Searches);
    multiSearch.Searches.Clear();
    foreach (var search in searches)
    {
        multiSearch.Searches.Add(SetTimeout(search, timeout));
    }
    return multiSearch;
}

And use it like this

var results = SearchClient.Instance
  .UnifiedSearch
  .For("random fruit")
  .SetTimeout(10000)
  .GetResult();

var results = searchClient.Search<Fruits>
  .For("banana")
  .SetTimeout(1000)
  .GetResult();

var results = searchClient.MultiSearch<Fruits>()
  .Search<Exotic>(x => x.For("Kiwi").InField(y => y.SearchTitle()))
  .Search<Ordinary>(x => x.For("Apple").InField(y => y.SearchTitle()))
  .SetTimeout(1000)
  .GetResult();

Make sure you catch your timeouts. They will throw a ServiceException.
More on Find exceptions you should consider catching is available in Jonas Bergqvist's blog post Exceptions in find